One of the features of modern communication networks is their ability to support ad-hoc networking. Ad-hoc networking includes a diverse number of networking technologies, including mobile ad-hoc networks (MANet), mesh networks, cellular networks, sensor networks, peer-to-peer networks, wireless personal area networks (WPAN), wireless local area networks (WLAN), ultra-wideband networks (UWB), backhaul connectivity of infrastructure devices such as wireless wide area networks (WWAN), and wireless metropolitan area networks (WMAN) such as WiMAX.
The design of efficient multi-hop routing algorithms to accommodate ad-hoc wireless communication is a factor toward achieving performance with very high throughputs and data rates. Very high throughput (VHT) applications such as wireless HDTV and wireless gigabit Ethernet are enabled by the use of higher bandwidths. The increasing availability of wireless access over larger chunks of spectrum (e.g., 7 GHz of unlicensed spectrum in the 60 GHz band) makes bandwidth and operating frequency useful parameters in the development of mesh architectures and multi-hop routing strategies in WPANs, WLANs and WWANs.
Multi-hop relaying technology enables spectral efficiency and power efficiency enhancements over long-range and/or large bandwidth communications (e.g., UWB) over the high end of the spectrum (the latter leads to a high path loss exponent) through path loss mitigation.
Throughout the description, similar reference numbers may be used to identify similar elements.